BEING a brewer is a dangerous occupation. But not because you run the risk of falling into a vat of water and hops, or being overcome by yeast fumes.

As Oakham Ales' head brewer John Bryan proved, it can be dangerous for far more stupid things than that.

John (34) decided to spend six months on the wagon, so he would be mentally and physically sharper and better equipped to handle the challenges of setting up a new £2 million Oakham Ales brewery, in Woodston, Peterborough.

Yet with only a few weeks to go, John was called upon to do some tasting sessions for the brewery. Three pints in, and he thought he might as well make a night of it.

As he explains, with a plaster cast on his right arm: "I had quite a few, and lifted a full cask above my head. I was going to let it fall, but then thought better of it, as I didn't want to ruin the floor, and so held onto it as it dropped.

"My arm twisted, and I've broken my wrist in three places."
Hopefully the thousands of boozers who enjoy this week's Peterborough Beer Festival will be a little bit more sensible after supping on some of the hundreds of ales on offer.

But John will be partly responsible for much of their pleasure, as he is the man in charge of all of the ales brewed by Oakham, including their much-loved White Dwarf, JHB and Bishop's Farewell.

He has worked at the brewery since 1995, and has also been masterminding the building and opening of the new state-of-the-art brewery, which will be officially opened in October.

The new facility, in Maxwell Road, is four times as big as the brewery tacked onto the Brewey Tap, and will be able to produce dozens more barrels a week.

But the Brewery Tap site in Westgate will stay open, producing speciality and one-off beers, such as the 5.7 per cent Oblivion, available in December, which "has a strong spiced fruit aroma. . . which lingers on in an almost boundless bitter finish."

Read more: Hundreds of real ales to be sampled | What to look for in an ale.

Or, rather, it will as long as the North Westgate planners keep their paws off it – possible plans show that the Brewery Tap might find itself demolished to make way for a car park.

John walked me through the various stages of beer production at the new site, taking care not to lift any barrels above his head or bash his right arm in the process.

Before he did so he flashed a T-shirt featuring a skull, the Oakham Ales symbol and a chastity belt in my face. The T-shirt is to promote the ale the team have concocted for the beer festival, Howse Buckler.

The name relates to naval terminology, as the girls who work at Oakham took one look at the lads dressed in khaki shorts and helmets to promote the beer created for last year's festival, Khyber Pass, and decided that they wanted the theme this year to be pirates.

Howse are the holes which support the chains holding on to an anchor, and a buckler is what covers them.

"The beer festival is the only time in the year when we are allowed to be stupid," said John. "It's the first time we've designed a beer to fit an idea, it's normally the other way around, but the girls are pleased."

The life of every Oakham Ale ale begins with a bag of malted barley, which costs £400 a tonne (there are 40 bags in a tonne) and hails from Castleford, West Yorkshire.

The pint's journey begins when a brewer punches in a recipe on a computer. From then, the barley is dished out, sorted for stones and bits of metal, and ground up.

The next significant stage is the hot liquor tank – liquor is the name brewers give to treated water. Each kilogram of malt receives two-and-a-half litres of water, and the end result is a big vat of what looks like porridge. Afterwards, all the barley husks go to be used as animal feed.

Temperatures in the vat reach up to 65C, and are monitored and controlled by hot water. In the days before the new facility, John would have to do this using a thermometer and adjust it using cold water.

Mashing converts starches into sugars, and lasts for around an hour and 10 minutes.

From then on, the dense, treacly liquid, dubbed wort, is run off into a "copper", where its strength is regularily maintained. From there it is put in an external work boiler, where it is boiled to 103C, to ensure sterility.

The next major step sees the wort passed through a heat exchanger, where it is cooled from 80C. The cold water that is heated up in the process is treated and used again at the start of the process.

The wort is then passed to a fermenting vessel, when yeast is added. Yeast turns sugars into alcohol, and it is at this point that the boyish wort turns into the hairy-chested, full bodied man that is beer.

It is important that the fermenting process isn't completed in the brewery, as each ale needs time in the cask to ferment a bit longer, to add the all-important touch of fizz.
To make sure that every batch of beer tastes exactly the same, Oakham uses the same samples of yeast they first used in 1996.

They tend to get around 12 rounds of beer from each sample of yeast, before they contact the lab at which the mother sample is held, and ask them to send them some more. But this will all change as soon as their own on-site yeast lab is built.

Towards the end of the process, the beer undergoes finings, which is another step of purification. Finings is made of fish gut and looks like a runny white glue. "That's why veggies don't drink beer," said John, as he swirled a beaker full of the horrible stuff in front of me.

In a fortnight's time, the brewery's cold store, which keeps beer at 10C, will be up and running and beer will be ready for sale.

The whole process takes between 10 to 12 days to complete.
And so which one is his favourite? Black Hole's Porter? Mompesson's Gold? Helter Skelter?

"It's impossible to say," he said. Is there anything he won't drink? "I'm trying to give up aftershave and thinners."
John's taste for good old-fashioned real ale used to cause problems when he went on weekends with the lads, who had the typical lads' lust for pints of less refined beverages.

"Having to drink lager and duff real ale would spoil my weekend," he said. "But I've chilled out a bit now, and can drink Budweiser Budvar, although not the American version, as that doesn't taste of anything."

How did he stumble into every man's dream job? "I was a farmer," he said. "But I began to get disillusioned with how the industry was going, and realised that farming's a lifestyle, and I didn't like the lifestyle.

"And so I sat and thought about what I wanted to do. After getting through things like racing car driver and pilot I had to think about what really was possible.

"I had to choose between beer and cheese, and I chose beer."
John said the two-and-a-half-year-long struggle to open the new brewery had taken its toll, and is relieved it finally seems to be coming together.

"The original Oakham brewer, John Wood, will be opening it on Friday, October 13," he said. "I'm relieved we're nearly there, and we've got the best team behind it now than ever before."

The new brewery's first batch of beer – Two Fools – might have been started on April 1 this year, but, as the complicated, scientific and lengthy brewing process proves, making falling-down juice is no joke.

Read more: Hundreds of real ales to be sampled | What to look for in an ale.

Article by: Jemma Walton, email: jemma.walton@peterboroughtoday.co.uk.